The Apartment On Euclid
A St. Louis Story of the 1970s
You reached the apartment through a door that opened directly off Euclid Avenue, and then up steep stairs to the second floor – a classic case of living above the shop. Literally right above their street-level antique shop. Though “antique shop” sounds too antique to describe the style of the place, and the things they had on offer, startling for sedate St. Louis, even in its gayest village – the once elegant, then decadent, Central West End – in the “YMCA,” “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real),” “Night Fever” 1970s.
By then, I’d had my own YMCA expeditions, in the Big Apple and elsewhere; and I’d known a few who I thought made me feel real (until they didn’t); and night fever … well, thermometers didn’t go high enough. But I’d made it back to St. Louis, older and wiser, but not yet too old, nor too wise, nor too burned to stop hoping for the future.
They closed the shop by 6:15, unless serious shoppers remained among the friends inevitably gathered there, and then repaired to the rooms upstairs, taking the friends with them - and sometimes the shoppers too.
They’d painted the living room walls butter yellow, the trim a lacquer white. In the daytime it smiled like the sun, and at night it bathed us in warmth. That, and the joints, and the camaraderie with fellow perverts, made it a paradise of kinship and comfort we’d never known before. One not made to last, but precious as gold while it did.
I can hear the voices now, and see the faces, which have not wrinkled, except for mine. Tears come into my eyes as I remember it, half from sadness that it’s past, and half from joy that it existed at all. And that I had my time in it.
One of us had grown up a Church of Christ child in West Texas; one, a Granite City greaser who cleaned up nice; another, a lusty young good old Mobile boy; and the fourth, a cherub from some small town in some Midwest state. Escape had brought each of us to St. Louis by way of his own route; and good luck (or fate?) had brought us together once there. Sometimes there were more than four, but often that sex and the city quartet, 20 years before the famous New York one: just as liberating, and also just as full of hope, fun and fear. Some were paired; some were not, or were in flux (once again), looking for another half (or half dozen).
Later in the evening, we might make our way across Euclid to Herbies’, mostly for dancing and drinking (and drugs, nothing heavy), Though mattress magic also had been known to start there. Still later, some still unpaired, might stroll the Avenue to Mr. A’s Potpourri with last-call tricking hopes, or make our ways to Club Baths, on Kingshighway, or Bob Martin’s, downtown, places where magic might happen, with or without mattresses.
But in those early evening hours, we moved from shop, to butter yellow living room, for cocktails and smokes, and then eggplant purple dining room, for spontaneous dinners, such as could be cobbled together from the remnants of delicacies in pantry and fridge.
We tacitly agreed how cool we were, to be young and hot and fuckable; and how lucky to be there instead of where we’d been. We lamented the ass that had abandoned us, last week or last year, for someone else’s bed. We took another sip, and toke, and talked about hot numbers or disco tunes.
And we camped. Camping still happened then, though already we’d started to stop calling it that. Things had turned serious since Stonewall. Even so far west, we’d learned that we no longer had to put up with bar raids and harassment, not quietly, anyway.
But nothing that serious dulled the edge in the apartment those evenings, not then not for us. Mister Granite City might say something gruff to Mister Mid West, as they did over there, across the mighty river. But it would be in jest – mostly so. And Mister Child of Christ might cast a sidelong glance at Mista Mobile Boy, as we all did at baskets bulging and buns melon round. A glance conceived in lust, cast in hope, sometimes successful, sometimes not. What’s to lose? Worth a shot.
We reveled in being together. But it wasn’t only that we were together. We were not alone. In our earlier, lonely lives, we’d all been alone so long. But now, we were not alone.
Al had been alone when they found him dead, murdered in his own apartment by a guy he’d picked up at the cannon circle in Forest Park, late at night, after the bars had closed, and he’d headed home without a trick. So the police speculated when they interviewed us. He’d been alone, even though in the company of the guy who murdered him.
And Morris jumped off the Eads Bridge into the Mississippi, alone, per the rumor that spread through the community. Speculation again. They never found a body, just a car parked half way across the bridge. He’d been alone.
And Fat Old Fart, the banker, now retired, sat alone on his bar stool night after night, nursing his Scotch, until he got so drunk he could no longer keep his hands off, and the bouncer called a cab to take him home. Alone.
They weren’t part of our little circle, only there at the edge like so many others – until they weren’t. Still, they’d be remembered sometimes, in evenings, with a bit of affection and nostalgia; sometimes with fear, late at night. And they’d be missed.
But we were not alone. We were not alone.
Of course nothing is forever, so too soon they split up, and closed the shop, and moved to their separate apartments.
Mista Mobile and I made mattress magic for a while; and then we didn’t.
We were no longer together. The anthems became “Can’t Live, If Living Is Without You,” and then “I Will Survive.” Because time showed that you could, and so you did.
For us, the apartment on Euclid worked its magic for only a little while. We had our time there, made our entrances and our exits. Then other actors made it their stage for their own plays in the theater of Central West End life.
We all moved to other apartments for other evenings, alone or not alone, but never again the four of us together. We lost touch, as such things happen. By now, some have made the final move, and for those of us who haven’t …
Well, we know how that sentence ends, after so many decades. Then, the apartment on Euclid, where we were not alone, will be forgotten. Nothing lasts forever. But at least it happened for a while, and I – we – had our time in it, together.